manes Lecture, which,
owing to my ignorance of modern electrical theory and experiments, is
more difficult for me than was your British Association Address.

I have been very much interested the last month by reading a book sent
me from America by Mr. W.L. Webb, being "An Account of the Unparalleled
Discoveries of Mr. T.J.J. See."

Several of Mr. See's own lectures are given, with references to his
"Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systems," in two large
volumes.

His theory of "capture" of suns, planets, and satellites seems to me
very beautifully worked out under the influence of gravitation and a
resisting medium of cosmical dust--which explains the origin and motions
of the moon as well as that of all the planets and satellites far better
than Sir G. Darwin's expulsion theory.

I note however that he is quite ignorant that Proctor, forty years ago,
gave full reasons for this "capture" theory in his "Expanse of Heaven,"
and also that the same writer showed that the Milky Way could not have
the enormous lateral extension he gives to it, but that it cannot really
be much flattened. He does not even mention the proofs given of this
both by Proctor and, I think, by Herbert Spencer, while in Mr. Webb's
volume (opposite p. 212) is a diagram showing the "Coal Sack" as a
"vacant lane" running quite through and across the successive spiral
extensions laterally of the galaxy, without any reference or a word of
explanation that such features, of which there are many, really
demonstrate the untenability of such extension.

An even more original and extremely interesting part of Mr. See's work
is his very satisfactory solution of the hitherto unsolved geological
problem of the origin of all the great mountain ranges of the world, in
Chapters X., XI., and XII. of Mr. Webb's volume. It seems quite complete
except for the beginnings, but I suppose it is a result of the formation
of the _earth_ by accretion and not by expulsion, by heating and not by
cooling....--Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

II.--Spiritualism

"The completely materialistic mind of my youth and early manhood
has been slowly moulded into the socialistic, spiritualistic, and
theistic mind I now exhibit--a mind which is, as my scientific
friends think, so weak and credulous in its declining years, as to
believe that fruit and flowers, domestic animals, glorious birds
and insects, wool, cotton, sugar and rubber,